Letters to "The Times" upon War and Neutrality (1881-1920) — Reading Notes

The Bombardment of Open Towns

The earliest letters, from the 1880s, focus on the legality of bombarding undefended coastal towns. Holland cites the 1874 Brussels Conference and the Crimean War precedent, where British cruisers “were careful to abstain from doing further damage than was involved in the confiscation or destruction of stores of arms and provisions.” He contrasts this with the fictional “Spider” vessel’s threats to “blow down” Ardrossan and shell the “Vale of Clyde.” A recurring image is the tension between military feasibility and legal restraint: Holland reproduces an 1889 parliamentary report in which a committee of admirals found that raiding enemy coasts to “touch his pocket” was both feasible and expedient. The letters do not resolve this tension but document its persistence across decades.

Neutrality and the Declaration of London

Later letters address the 1909 Declaration of London, which attempted to codify the rights of neutrals at sea. Holland’s commentary, added for the book edition, notes that the Declaration was “unfortunately conceived” and that the Naval Prize Bill of 1911 raised still-unsettled questions. The letters themselves track specific disputes: a Russian protest against Japanese actions in 1904, for example, prompts Holland to argue that the “correctness of the views maintained” was later established by subsequent events. The structure here is cumulative—each letter builds on earlier ones, with Holland often returning to the same principle (e.g., the distinction between contraband and conditional contraband) as new crises arise.

The Voice of the Practitioner

Holland’s prose is that of a barrister addressing a jury: he uses rhetorical questions (“Can this be true?”), direct quotations from opponents, and appeals to common sense. In one exchange, a Captain James writes that “the talk about international law is all nonsense,” and Holland replies by calmly enumerating two questions for “serious consideration.” The letters are also marked by a dry, almost sardonic tone when describing hypothetical scenarios—the “Spider” and its “fine marine residences” are treated with mock indignation. This voice, preserved from the original newspaper columns, gives the collection a sense of immediacy that a formal treatise would lack.

Movement Between Scene and Principle

The book’s structure alternates between concrete events (a naval exercise, a diplomatic protest, a parliamentary bill) and abstract legal principles. Holland’s prefaces to the three editions (1909, 1914, 1921) frame the collection as a response to “the events of the day,” but the letters themselves often leap from a single incident to a general rule. For instance, the 1888 letter about the naval manoeuvres moves within a few paragraphs from the fictional bombardment to the Brussels Conference conclusions, then to the Crimean War, and finally to the question of whether future wars will respect international law. This movement—from the particular to the universal and back—is the collection’s central rhetorical strategy.

Readers approaching this collection should treat each letter as a snapshot of a legal mind at work under deadline. The cross-references and index help navigate the fragmentary format, but the real interest lies in watching Holland apply the same principles—proportionality, distinction, good faith—to crises ranging from the Boer War to the First World War. The book is not a systematic treatise but a record of how international law was argued in public, one letter at a time.